Roseanne Barr's Plan to Solve America's Problems With Ganja

How this domestic goddess became the Goddess of Ganja.

Roseanne Barr has reinvented herself once again. In her new web series She’s So High, the comedian transitions from domestic goddess to “Goddess of Ganja.” The show discusses cannabis culture, but according to Barr, it’s about much more.

In the first episode, Roseanne, atop an altar wearing a golden headdress, levels the audience with a serious gaze, before advising: “I’m all that stands between you and a load of bullshit.”

According to Roseanne, there is a lot of bullshit to wade through. A visit to her blog reveals some serious political essays dating back before 2012, on topics such as Israel, Palestine, and the Wall Street bailouts. Two issues that Roseanne deeply cares about are universal health care and the war on drugs, specifically marijuana legalization.

Roseanne is more determined than ever that pot must be legalized, not just decriminalized.

Barr, who is bi-polar and has ADHD, has firsthand knowledge of how pot legalization can help people’s lives. She regularly smokes marijuana and claims it has kept these conditions in remission.

She also announced to the Daily Beast last April, that she is slowly losing her vision from a degenerative eye disease and uses cannabis for the pain.

“I have macular degeneration and glaucoma; so it’s good for me for that because I have pressure in my eyes. It’s a good medicine for a lot of things.”

Most people know the domestic goddess from her stratospheric hit series Roseanne, which mirrored her working class Salt Lake City upbringing, and stand-up act. The show ran from 1988 to 1997 and earned the star a Golden Globe and an Emmy. Barr is also infamous for her controversial 1990 rendition of the "Star Spangled Banner," which rubbed many patriots the wrong way, right on the cusp of the Gulf War.

After her show ended, Roseanne stepped away from the sitcom world. Barr is candid about the constant battles with producers and television execs to keep the title character from being, as she has written in New York magazine, “a victim of patriarchal consumerist bullshit." Instead of doing a spin-off, she tried her hand at various projects, including a cooking show, a talk show, and one reality show called Roseanne’s Nuts, which followed her life on her Macadamia Nut farm in Hawaii where she lived with her family.

The crux of Nuts hinged upon seeing the juxtaposition of a Hollywood star in a jungle, wielding a machete and fighting off feral pigs. It allowed Barr to be her uncensored self and helped develop her political voice.

She cited men’s inability to pick up their own socks or put a carton of milk back in the refrigerator after drinking from it as proof of man's inability to solve bigger, pressing problems.

Roseanne seemed to be in her element, transitioning from Hollywood celebrity to social activist. Not feeling compelled to rush back to the sound stages and back lots, she spoke at the campus of Oaksterdam marijuana university after federal agents raided state-approved pot dispensaries, and took to her blog, working full force to end the war on drugs.

Roseanne’s turn from reality entertainment to politics (which is recently becoming an increasingly blurred line), was highlighted when she was the subject of the documentary Roseanne for President. The film followed her as she campaigned for president in 2011 and lost the Green Party bid to Jill Stein, but then picked up the Peace and Freedom nomination. She ran in 2012 with ticket-mate Cindy Sheehan, coming in sixth in the overall race, a fact she still is intensely proud of.

Some acrimony remains when Roseanne speaks about the Green Party nomination; Barr believes her TV fame would have helped spread the Green Party message and platform better than Stein’s bid.

Roseanne now stumps for what she calls the Green (Tea) Party and the Church of Common Sense.

Roseanne is more determined than ever that pot must be legalized, not just decriminalized. Her assertion is that a large number of prisoners jailed in America are there for drug misdemeanors, which were made through racial profiling. If these prisoners were given a chance to go to college at the right age, rather than jailed, it would ultimately be cheaper for the taxpayers.

She also points out that the health benefits of pot would help our country with cancer, PTSD, and other ailments, and would be a financial relief to Americans free to grow their own medications in their own backyard.

Barr claims that if every person sitting atop every Ponzi scheme were forced to pay back the money they stole, then this country would be able to right itself.

Barr seems secure that her former Domestic Goddess title gives her the spokeswoman leverage to deem patriarchal politics obsolete. She cited men’s inability to pick up their own socks or put a carton of milk back in the refrigerator after drinking from it as proof of man's inability to solve bigger, pressing problems.

Roseanne’s plan would give voters more voice where their tax money goes. She says that working class women could be much more effective in spending public money.

“Poor women know how to get things done cheap, they know how to stretch that dollar.”

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Barr claims that if every person sitting atop every Ponzi scheme were forced to pay back the money they stole, then this country would be able to right itself.

She has some other ideas involving priest pedophiles, war profiteers, and the guillotine that while creative, may not help elect her anytime soon.

However, health care for all, the distribution of public money by the people/for the people, legalizing a substance that could help many sick people, and not overcrowding our jails by racially profiling: much of what her Green (Tea) Party advocates sounds like the reasonable suggestions of a former domestic goddess.

Goddess of Ganga Roseanne’s new web series will release messages to planet America with the aim of transforming 2016, one puff at a time, in mind.